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Minutemen
Image:052708-watchmen-minutemen.jpg|thumb|300px|right|Left to right: Silhouette, Mothman, Dollar Bill, Nite Owl, Captain Metropolis, the Comedian, Silk Spectre, Hooded Justice rect 8 149 140 545 The Silhouette rect 122 133 257 544 Mothman rect 222 116 340 548 Dollar Bill rect 322 147 433 549 Nite Owl rect 408 142 504 273 Captain Metropolis rect 414 254 523 575 The Comedian rect 483 167 568 396 The Silk Spectre rect 555 100 714 563 Hooded Justice default Minutemen desc bottom-left The Minutemen were the premier group of superheroes throughout the 1940s. They were founded in 1939, largely through the actions of Nelson Gardner (Captain Metropolis), Sally Jupiter (the first Silk Spectre) and Sally Jupiter's agent Laurence Schexnayder. Schexnayder also provided the group's publicity. After several public controversies, the group finally disbanded in 1949. History Formation The crime-fighter Captain Metropolis contacted Silk Spectre and her manager, Larry Schexnayder about joining forces with all "mystery men". Metropolis provided his headquarters, an incomplete and abandoned malting factory on the river Hudson. As the World War II was starting in Europe, advertisements were published in newspapers, attracting the interest of adventurers who wished to fight for the country. The Golden Age In 1939, the original eight-person lineup of the team included Captain Metropolis, Silk Spectre, Hooded Justice, Nite Owl, Silhouette, Dollar Bill, Mothman and The Comedian. Because of their name and the war, Metropolis and Schexnayder wished their image to be that of "modern patriots". They worked to organize their first mission together that would grab attention and publicity: to expose Italian weapon smugglers. Spectre diverted the guard while Owl, Silhouette and Comedian infiltrated the warehouse. C.P and H.J. came with an army tank, driven by Bill while simultaneously Mothman flew and threw a smoke grenade in the warehouse. However the information was not verified. The smugglers actually smuggled chinese fireworks, cherry bombs and candles. Mothman's grenade fell right into the crate creating a havoc of explosions and fireworks. The Comedian left the group in 1940, after attempting to rape Sally Jupiter, reducing the group's membership to seven. The remaining Minutemen actively fought crime throughout the war years, with their peak period of activity ranging from 1939 to 1946. Decline In 1946, Silhouette was expelled for having a lesbian relationship and was later killed. In 1947, Dollar Bill was also killed while attempting to intervene at a bank robbery when his cape became caught in the revolving doors of the entrance. Also in 1947 Sally Jupiter retired in order to marry Schexnayder, and gave birth to her daughter. In 1949, the remaining four members of the group decided to disband. Members Captain Metropolis One of the founders of the Minutemen, Nelson Gardner, originally suggested that a group of heroes pooling their resources could be more effective than a handful of individuals. As an ex-Marine lieutenant, Captain Metropolis was motivated by ending "social ills" such as promiscuity and anti-war demonstrations. Gardner insisted that his motivations were not selfish or fanatically conservative. In 1966 Gardner attempted to restore the costumed hero fad by founding the Crimebusters. The Comedian A teenage "thug" armed with a baseball bat. He was fighting the criminals around the New York harbor and always made sure that it was worth his time. There was a word that the Comedian striped the criminals he captured from their money and kept them himself. When he joined the Minutemen he complained that publicity was not enough and he was looking forward for real money. The Comedian was noteworthy for the rape attempt against Silk Spectre. Most of his colleagues voted whether he should be expelled, such as Hollis Mason who was often critical for him. As the Comedian told them, the Minutemen were all he had, however he pursued a solo career after that. Hooded Justice As the first costumed vigilante, Hooded Justice utilized sheer brutality to stop a bank robbery as his first act of heroism. His identity was never revealed, but due to his large, body-builder type figure, many conjectured that HJ was actually former circus strong-man'' Rolf Müller. After HJ stopped her rape at the hands of the Comedian, Silk Spectre (Sally Jupiter) posed as his girlfriend to calm suspicions that Justice was a homosexual sadist and protect the image of the Minutemen in the 1940s. When the Minutemen began to be questioned by the , Hooded Justice vanished, leaving many to conjecture that he died at the hands of the Comedian. Rolf's badly decomposing body was found in a river three years later, but the circumstances of his death, and the possibility that he actually was Hooded Justice, were never proven. Then again, due to the East German background of Rolf, some suspect that if he was indeed Rolf, he may have had communist ties and been assassinated either by the US government (possibly using the Comedian himself, but perhaps not), or by his own Red superiors because they felt he was becoming too high-profile. Mason didn't like the implications of any of these lines of speculation, so he simply left the fate of Hooded Justice as an open mystery. Silhouette Ursula Zandt, a Jewish Austrian immigrant who escaped the rise of Nazism in Austria, joined the Minutemen as Silhouette. Ursula wanted the team to do something meaningful, like her exposure of a child pornography ring; Schexnayder insisted that the ''Minutemen publicity should be connected with more positive and patriotic concepts like "saving the grandma" and not "sad children". This policy made Zandt to doubt about the real meaning of the team, which was mainly image, publicity and money. Ursula often baited Sally Jupiter about her Polish roots, which Jupiter outright denied. She was later expelled from the group when it became public knowledge that she was a lesbian in 1946. Six weeks after her public outage and expulsion from the team, she was killed alongside her lover by an old adversary who sought revenge. Nite Owl After being inspired by an article on Hooded Justice's first appearance in the'' New York Gazette, Hollis Mason, an average policeman, became the first Nite Owl. He replied to C.M.'s advertisement and was accepted to the Minutemen. Initially he was attracted to Silhouette, whom he considered the only person who knew why she was fighting. He helped to lead the team for many years. Once Doctor Manhattan became a public mainstay, Mason retired from hero work to open a garage, passing on the Nite Owl mantle to Dan Dreiberg, a long-time fan and eventually wrote a tell-all book about their endeavors called Under the Hood. His book contained the first public mention of the Comedian's rape of Sally Jupiter.. Mason was killed on Halloween in 1985 when he was confused for Dreiberg by a mob of Knot Tops gang members and beaten to death for the release of Rorschach from prison. Silk Spectre Upon the advice of her agent, Laurence Schexnayder, Sally Juspeczyk quit her career in burlesque dancing/waitressing and became a crimefighter. After one of the first meetings of the Minutemen, Sally "Jupiter," as she preferred to be called to mask her Polish heritage, was sexually assaulted by the Comedian. Hooded Justice intervened, resulting in bad blood between the two men. Sally later fell in love with the Comedian, even having a child by him while still married to Schexnayder, eventually becoming the root cause of their divorce. Her dancing background and acceptance of pornography-style comics drawn of her are indications that she is a victim of low self-esteem as well as a woman who desired aggressive male attention. The original Silk Spectre trained her daughter, Laurel Jane, early on to take up the mantle and be a better hero than she could ever be. She eventually retired to a rest home in California, letting her daughter take care of the crimefighting. Dollar Bill Dollar Bill was originally a star college athlete from Kansas, employed as an in-house superhero by one of the major, but unnamed, national banks. While attempting to stop a raid upon one of his employer's banks, his cloak became entangled in the bank's revolving door and he was shot dead before he could free it. In Under the Hood'', Hollis Mason's tell-all book, Mason described Dollar Bill as an honest, friendly young man, and rued the stupidity of capes because of the incident. Interestingly enough, Dollar Bill's clear commercial motivations (public identity, hired by a bank) are never commented on by his peers or the subsequent generation of vigilantes who all seem to regard him as a worthy hero – even Rorschach, who condemns Ozymandias for his commercialization, laments Dollar Bill's untimely death. Mothman Something of a minor character, Byron Lewis was one of the costumed adventurers that appeared after the appearance of Hooded Justice. Lewis used special wings to glide in the air while battling crime. Lewis was frightened by the idea of the second World War. He was one of the four Minutemen to remain on the team after the deaths of Dollar Bill and the Silhouette, the Comedian's expulsion, and the Silk Spectre's retirement. Lewis was investigated by HUAC, and had difficulty clearing his name due to several left-wing friends. The pressure from these investigations is considered to have precipitated his alcoholism and subsequent mental health problems that eventually consigned him to a sanatorium in New England. He is not a main focus of the storyline, but appears in flashbacks, at one point reduced in later years to fragile sanity, unnerving the second Silk Spectre. He is regarded fondly by most of the Minutemen, and the first Nite Owl sends Dreiberg to visit him, uncostumed, on his behalf. Category:Minutemen